Get the expertise you need to take your fundraising to the next level
With thirty years of fundraising experience, I know what works—and what doesn’t.
Your team will learn the tried-and-true practices used at top-tier institutions—so you’ll have the resources you need to continue achieving your mission for years to come.
While my solutions are always customized to your specific circumstances, these are the primary services I offer:
Fundraising and Campaigns
Development Program Assessment:
Feel like your organization has unfulfilled fundraising potential, but you’re unsure if you have the right people and strategies in place? I conduct assessments for individual departments and whole advancement programs, delivering a set of recommendations rooted in industry best practices and tailored to your specific environment—and I can help you implement those recommendations as well.
Campaign Planning & Implementation:
Whether you’re in the middle of a campaign or planning for your next one, the key to increasing your fundraising capacity is making sure your strategy is thoughtfully imagined, well-tested, and expertly implemented. Thinking about “staffing up?” I'll bring my experience with all aspects of campaigning to help you efficiently add the resources to ensure you implement a strategy that exceeds your goals.
Major Gifts:
Organizations are increasingly relying on major gifts to drive their gift revenue aspirations. The competition for the philanthropic dollar is fierce! I work with teams to build their capacity to meet their organization’s needs for five- and six-figure gifts through the development of compelling cases for support, best practice fieldwork, and effective partnerships with catalysts like content experts and board members.
Principal Gifts:
Are you watching other organizations land multi-million dollar gifts and wondering how you can be one of them? I'll help you understand the key factors for success in partnering with mega-donors and how to make your organization the recipient of the next headline-making transformative gift.
Coaching
Increasingly, fundraising is everyone's job, and one-on-one coaching helps ensure that each individual is contributing to organizational goals as effectively as possible—even if it’s not their primary responsibility.
I help faculty, deans, C-suite leaders, athletic coaches, and other organizational stakeholders become effective partners in the development process. I also work with new and aspiring development leaders to build technical and leadership skills so they can navigate the increasingly complex and challenging waters of advancement leadership.
Interim Leadership
Are you in the market for a development leader, but the timing isn't quite right to hire a permanent person?
I’ll step in to provide leadership on a limited-term basis to assist with the search for your next senior leader to ensure a smooth and effective transition.
“Jeff’s superpower is helping teams maintain a calm sense of purpose in moments of transformation. When I worked with him at the Lucile Packard Foundation, our teams collaborated to make critical improvements that endure to this day—and we had our best fundraising year in the foundation’s history, raising $291 million.”
-Andrew Kaufteil, Senior Vice President of Strategic Communications, The Lucile Packard Foundation
You’re tasked with ensuring the continued success of your organization.
You’re deeply passionate about your mission, and you feel lucky to wake up every morning
knowing that you’re contributing to making the world a better place.
But, when it comes to fundraising, you feel like you haven’t reached your potential.
Figuring out where the funding is going to come from sometimes keeps you up at night.
Your team is amazing! But are your people:
● adequately trained in fundraising best practices?
● executing a strategy that will get them from Point A to Point B?
● able to develop relationships that could result in game-changing gifts?
And then, what will happen to all the people who depend on you if you don’t hit the target?
The clock is ticking. The board is asking…
The pressure’s high. What if you don’t hit that number?
Get me on the case.
I bring a wealth of experience to help leaders and teams in the development organization level up their skills and tune into the right mindset!
There’s no shortage of philanthropy out there—now let’s make the case and build the plan to direct the flow of resources in your direction.
“Jeff led the strategy for our first-ever comprehensive campaign and managed a very large organization with competing priorities through some challenging times—and I never saw him flustered. He was unflappable, and we succeeded!”
- Rebecca Levy, former Campaign Director at the University of California–Santa Cruz
FAQs
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Yes! I am the lead consultant on all engagements. I bring with me a national network of advancement professionals with considerable functional expertise that I call upon as needed. If I bring partners into our work, I’ll be fully transparent with you. In the meantime, you can be certain that I’m the one doing the work.
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While most of my work will be in a remote and consultative capacity, I’m happy to come on site, and periodically, I can be available to be “in-house” on a full- or part-time basis for a limited period: see “Interim Leadership” above.
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As someone who has held a variety of development positions in different organizations, I feel your pain. Let’s talk, and if I don’t offer what you need – I will likely have some suggestions for other solutions.
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I do believe there are a number of tried-and-true frameworks that will be useful to our work together. Otherwise, everything we do will be customized to your situation.
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It totally depends on what you need. I’ve worked on projects that lasted just a few weeks and others that went for over a year.
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Let’s talk. I’m happy to work completely behind the scenes so you and your staff can shine.
Ready for a chat?
Let’s develop a plan that gets this show on the road.